Push
by sissyHIYAH
Summary: Seifer and Edea have a conversation while washing dishes. Power and pride and desire and all those little things that drive people to do the things they do are discussed.


"I wanted you to hurt him."

Edea plunged her raw hands back into the sudsy water and felt through the scum in the bottom of the sink, searching for the drain stopper.

"What?"

"I wanted you to hurt him." Her fingertips touched something soft that might have been a bit of potato or a piece of carrot. She shivered. Whatever it was, it had once been alive, but now it was nothing but a creature of slime and nightmares. Unseen and lurking under the bubbles, it was no longer just forgotten food, but a hungry water demon, starchy lips parted and waiting...

"What the hell are you talking about?" Seifer watched her hands. A thin layer of grease, all that remained of dinner, circled her wrists like the finest of slave bracelets. She pulled the stopper and the water gurgled down the drain, yet the skim of animal fat still caressed her skin. She wore filth well. "I hurt everyone you asked me to hurt."

"Did you?" She snatched the towel from the counter and wiped her hands. "Then why is he sitting in that chair right now, reading that goddamned newspaper?"

Seifer glanced through the door and saw Cid, comfortable, drowsy, and warm, reclined in his chair and reading the paper. His belly was full of Edea's stew and he was laughing at some joke that one of the others told. Probably Irvine. He had an easy manner that relaxed the old man. "You mean..."

"Who did you think I meant?"

"I..." He didn't know, but he also didn't understand why she wanted to hurt Cid. "Never mind."

Edea smiled and Seifer thought of curtains on a stage, though it was a play he had already seen. Hell, he was the fucking director for that particular production. It was a sell-out crowd every night, though some complained about the act and wanted a refund.

"Never mind what, exactly?"

"Forget it."

"Oh. Of course." The smile changed and the play ended. He was mistaken. There was no part for him in this new production. Her script was written with a quill plucked from a screaming bird of glass and shadow. "You're a good boy, Seifer, but I shouldn't have used you."

Was his mother trying to apologize? Had she realized that it was all wrong, that nothing was right since that day in Timber? Could they finally go back to...

"I should have used one of the girls." She tossed the towel on the counter and rested her hands on the edge of the sink.

"What?"

"I forgot that boys simply don't understand. My poor little boy, you didn't understand what I wanted you to do."

"Stop calling me that." He grabbed the towel and wrapped it around his knuckles, rubbing the cloth against the opposite palm. It wasn't really comforting, but at least it helped.

"Fine. Man, men, boy, boys...it's all the same thing. You play at war, yet you don't want to finish. You know nothing of completion. Girls, now, girls are different."

"Why are you acting like this tonight?"

She ignored him, though she took note of the towel. "Selphie would have been ideal. She is exact and precise. Her destruction would have been beautiful, almost like a lover's flower. 'He loves me, he loves me not.' She would have torn the petals from the world and giggled at the scent."

It hit him then and he understood. "She wouldn't have worked."

Edea pouted her lips as she considered his words. Until Selphie was broken, she wasn't quite right. Give Irvine time to be bored with her, then she would talk with her. Then...then she might work. "No, I suppose you're right. Even if she did, she would have picked up the pieces and reassembled the lot."

"Like the toaster." He smiled as he recalled the taste of burnt toast. He had punched Selphie's arm that morning, furious that she had ruined breakfast for everyone. She punched him back and adjusted the setting on the rebuilt toaster, then added a fresh slice of bread and waited. When a perfect slice of toast appeared, she stuck out her tongue and laughed. She always had been able to fix whatever she ruined. Selphie was funny that way.

"Hmm. Yes. She wouldn't do at all."

Loud laughter sounded from the living room and both turned to see Irvine wearing Squall's jacket and swinging an imaginary gunblade. Seifer moved just enough so he could see Quistis apart from the rest, knees curled underneath her swollen body, reading a book on one end of the couch. She didn't laugh, but a faint smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. She was beautiful and she was his.

"Now, Quistis...even I'm frightened of her at times."

"Her? Why?"

Edea could taste his thoughts and she felt shame for savoring the flavor, though not enough to deny herself a second helping. "Why, because she knows enough of pain to use it. Zell is much too simple. He falls and bounces up like nothing happened. Selphie and Irvine are cogs and spokes. Eventually one of them is going to destroy the other, just like a clock that has seen too many hours. You are too much like Squall and you both hide your pain before you forget it, but Quistis..."

Seifer remembered all of the teasing and the tears, the failures and the pieces of 'nearly-there' that formed the girl on the couch. "She uses it. Fuck."

"Good boy. You've always been clever." Distance and time and mute, unspeakable need silenced her for a few seconds. The cracks in her polished ivory towers had never seemed so deep. "Yes, can you imagine what I might have accomplished if I had used her instead of you?"

Seifer knew that he had done bad things, but he didn't think they were bad at the time. They were right and just, all deeds done for his queen. He was a good boy. "No. I can't imagine it."

"Can't you?"

"No."

"Oh, come now. Don't lie to your mother. I think you can picture it if you try hard enough."

"I don't want to imagine it."

She patted his hand. Her fingertips were still wrinkled from washing dishes and Seifer recoiled from the slippery promise of death in her hands. "And this is why I should have used a girl. You know nothing of birth and death, and you certainly know nothing of motherhood."

"And you're telling me that you know all about it?" He didn't mean to say it, but he couldn't help it. The pain that glittered in her golden irises was far too beautiful, far too familiar and far too forbidden. Barren Edea and her broken brood...she was mother to all of them, yet none had passed her loins. They were hers, but they were strangers.

"Hmm...perhaps you're right. Should I ask her about motherhood? She is learning about it even now, and she was always the quickest to learn anything."

Something primal crawled from her throat. "I could teach her so much..."

"Don't fucking touch her." Not the sorceress, not her.

She laughed, well aware of his fears, though it hurt far more than it should have. "My poor, poor boy. I don't need to touch her. She'll know that pain soon enough, then she'll also know the pain of protection. Then, oh and then, she'll know the desire."

"Desire for _what_?"

"Why, the desire to build a better nest for her hatchlings."

"Nest? What the fuck are you talking about?"

The floorboards creaked underneath her feet. "Did you truly think that I meant to simply destroy the world?"

"Didn't you? You made me hurt so many people..."

"Don't be foolish. I wanted time in an instant, a moment...a flash."

Quistis looked up from her book and saw the pair staring at her from the kitchen. She smiled and absently rubbed her belly, soothing the promise underneath.

Seifer wanted that motion of her hand to last forever.

Edea gripped his hand and whispered, "You understand now, don't you? She's your present and she holds your future in her womb. You want eternity for that, don't you?"

He nodded but said nothing.

"And that is why I wanted you to hurt him. He has _never_ understood." Words spoken with the soft promise of earth ready to split, she muttered, "Instead of helping me, he sought to destroy me..."

"What? With Garden? I thought the Gardens were your idea."

She sighed and turned back to the sink. "When she has your daughter, and yes, before you ask, it is a girl..." Edea smiled again, but this time he felt no fear. He wondered why he should have ever felt fear in the first place. "...would you force your daughter to kill her mother just to save the world? Because of some prophecies and premonitions?"

"Never."

"Then you are better than I ever hoped to be. I feared what I might bring to the world, so I convinced him to kill me if need be."

"And he agreed."

"But with my children?! My _children_, Seifer! He couldn't draw the blade himself? He couldn't..."

Seifer reached for her this time and understood her wrath, knew why the sorceress chose her, knew something of the urge to destroy an imperfect world. She was his mother and she simply wanted the best for her children. He held her wrist and felt the thin bones under his fingers. She was far too old to be so young. Too frail. He knew why she wanted Cid to hurt. "No. He knows nothing of pain, so he couldn't do it."

"Could you? If the power hadn't gone to Rinoa, but had somehow made it to Quistis, could you do it? Could you do for her what Cid could never do for me?"

"If she asked me to?"

"_Yes!" _Edea clutched at Seifer's shirt, searching for forgiveness, understanding, vengeance, any number of things. Whatever she wanted, Seifer held it. Though Cid was the one that wronged her, she had no right to make her favorite son suffer like he had for the past few years.

"She would never ask me."

"What?"

He shrugged. "She'd do it herself before she'd put that kind of pressure on me. Like you said, she knows pain and she wouldn't make me suffer like that. And I'll be damned before I'd let her do it to herself, so it doesn't really matter."

Edea released his collar and tilted her head. "You're a funny boy, Seifer."

"I've been called worse." He gestured to the empty sink and raised his eyebrows. "Are we finished in here? I'd like to smack the hell out of Zell for using so goddamned many plates. He's the messiest fucking eater I know."

Relief and an odd sense of purpose made Edea chuckle at his words. Motherhood had been a disaster. An outright disaster. Her children were killers and murderers, but maybe now…

Perhaps being a grandmother would be different. She was a terrible maiden, an even worse mother, but a crone? Just maybe… "Mind your tongue, Seifer. I doubt that you'll want your daughter miming such language."

"Shit. You need to have a conversation with Trepe if you're worried about _my _language."

"Do I?"

Seifer grinned and kissed Edea on the cheek. "Ask her about the night I made pancakes. You'll never correct me about my language again."


End file.
